“Greek leaders, administrators discuss discrimination issue”
This article actually came up on my radar in another class and this was something that I really wanted to look more into as a black woman in the Panhellenic Greek community.
My experience with Greek life at TCU has been a very positive one but I’m definitely not blind to the discrimination that black people face within the Greek community.
Here are some basic facts about Greek life at TCU:
· 51% of Undergraduate students are Greek
· 52% of women in a chapter within the Panhellenic Council
· IGC, IDC. MGC, NPHC, PC
Diving further into the essence of the article, this Daily Skiff article focuses on the efforts by a professor named Elizabeth Proffer, to fight against the discrimination of black students and specifically black women on TCU’s campus. She sent letters to numerous chapters about the lack of diversity and denying people of color to join a chapter within IFC or PC. She was the Dean of Students and she advocated for POC and black people specifically, the entire time that she was at TCU
Elizabeth Proffer went on to win an Alumni Award in 93.Elizabeth proffer has an award named after her. (Elizabeth Youngblood Proffer Faculty Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Mission of Student Affairs) Eventually she retired on her own and died in 2006 at the age of 82.
I think it’s important to note that yes there are great chapters within the other councils (chapters that praise diversity and inclusion) but people of color, with different backgrounds etc. should have the option to choose and not be pushed into one council because all of the other ones “don’t want them.” Finding your people, your home, your organization should not be limited to an elite group of people but that’s what some councils think. There are absolutely zero stats on the diversity within each council but the diversity section on the website only refers to NPHC chapters #suspect.
The presence of NPHC chapters is great and I think in a way this was a way for IFC and PC to say, “we don’t have to accept black people or other ethnically diverse people into our organization because they will have somewhere else to go.” This is unfair to black women on campus. Historically black fraternities and sororities are important on this campus, but black people deserve the right to choose the same way that white people are allowed to have their “choice of the littler” when it comes to picking their home from the 11-13 houses.
In conclusion, this is still just as much of an issue amongst chapters at TCU now as it was back in 1978. When I was researching this topic, I thought a lot about what bell hooks said in regard to inclusion in feminism and not only that but also her critique of power struggles within the women’s movement. TCU has a long way to go with this issue. Since the start of my research I have reached out to the Panhellenic community about the lack of diversity and inclusive ethnicities and there are plans in motion to discuss these inequities and then going forward, I plan on forcing positive change within this community.
Tasia Robinson